Senior Honors Projects

Bridal wear has traditionally been viewed as big white dresses. But as times change, so do brides’ preferences for bridal wear. Jumpsuits, rompers, short dresses, and other “non-traditional” choices are experiencing an increased demand in the market. Unfortunately, brides who seek these options are often not met with a promising assortment. This study examined primary consumers of non-traditional bridal wear. Specifically, we sought to find out whether women who belong to the LGBTQ community choose to consume more non-traditional bridal wear compared to heterosexual brides. The study also examined through which channels (e.g., online, in store, etc.) consumers predominantly ...

Performing Queerness, Jasmina Sinanovic

Open Educational Resources

Kawamoto, Eric, Cosette Holmes, Tiana Cope-Ferland

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

To completely understand of the history of an oppressed community, we must understand the personal stories of the members of that community. To dig deeper into their stories, the Querying the Past project at the University of Southern Maine collects interviews illuminating the struggle. Specifically, queer people have long struggled to balance their identities in society, overcome discrimination, gain legal rights, and survive disease. This interview with Eric Kawamoto reveals a journey of self-discovery in Chicago, L.A., Boston, and Portland; an intersection between being Asian American and being queer; and survival of AIDS as a result of reserve. Kawamoto ...

Mckenzie, Ellen, Caroline Wheeler, Marwa Ibrahim

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

This interview features Ellen McKenzie, an African-American lesbian woman living in Portland, Maine. Having lived in Portland for almost her entire life, Ellen can provide insight on growing up in one of the only black families in her community, the intersections between race and sexuality, co-parenting children from a spouse’s previous marriage and generally navigating the world and her career as a queer woman of color. Throughout this interview, we hear a lot about her childhood and her family’s history as civil rights activists in Maine, her relationship with her spouse and and co-parenting their children with both ...

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Illy Nes’s novel El lago rosa (The Pink Lake, 2004) and Cristina Cuesta’s short story “Zoe y Haydee” (Zoe and Haydee, 2007) depict travel and cross-cultural queer relationships that call attention to racial and class differences as well as ethnic and cultural divides. Both narratives raise questions concerning the representation of queer women of color in Spanish fiction of the new millennium. This article focuses on the diverse cultural, political and personal struggles that surround the formation and negotiation of sexual identity, emphasizing the fact that LGBTQ identity is not necessarily cross-culturally or universally constructed around identical interests ...

Inversion And The Third Sex: Gender Variance And Queer Expression In Anti-Suffrage Rhetoric, Anthony Pankuch

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In the early decades of the 20th century, critics of the women’s suffrage movement commonly denounced their opponents’ perceived disregard for the gendered norms of the era. Given the clear delineation of rights provided to either sex at that time, any expansion of women’s liberties meant an incursion into what was seen as a predominantly masculine realm. Countless arguments put forth by anti-suffragists suggested a complete breakdown of what is today contextualized as a predominantly cisgender, heterosexual society. Simultaneously, the development of psychology and sexology as fields of study lent moralizing voices a highly pathologized foundation upon ...

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

In Canada, particularly since the protection of minority rights under the Charter, rights rhetoric and judicial challenges have emerged as a critical means of redressing the inequity experienced by subordinated peoples and groups - thereby privileging law and its accompanying equality framework as an agent of enfranchisement. Undoubtedly, no other social group has witnessed such rapid advancement of their rights via legal activism in the Canadian policy landscape as has the LGBTQ community – including access to marriage. This paper uses findings from a qualitative study with LGBTQ individuals who married their same -sex partners to increase our understanding of the impact ...

Mckenzie, Mike, Wendy Chapkis

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Mike McKenzie was born in 1971 and grew up in Scarborough Maine raised by his single mother. Mike knew he was gay in 1988 while still in high school where he witnessed and faced homophobia. This resulted in dropping out of school at the age of 16. At 17, Mike joined the Coast Guard and served from 1990 to 1991. As a very masculine gay man, he was generally well accepted by those he served with who knew he was gay but faced homophobia from a newcomer who outed Mike; this resulted in a discharge from the Coast Guard. Back ...

Henderson, Susan, Emma Wynn Hill

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Susan Henderson is a gay woman living in Portland, Maine. She realized she was gay after attending a meeting of the Wilde Stein Club at the University of Maine in Orono. After leaving Orono, she worked at the Portland Social Security Office and stayed there for 36 yeasr. She helped to write a newsletter for the Maine Gay Task Force that turned into Mainly Gay Magazine, a magazine that reached people nationwide. On the Maine Gay Task Force she helped to put on the Gay Symposia that the group hosted for almost ten years. She came out in the 70s ...

Manson, Barry, Alanna Larivee, Emma Wynn Hill

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Barry Manson was born in Skowhegan, Maine in 1947. He grew up in Rumford and worked in his father’s grocery store from third grade to high school. Manson shares his story of being an out gay man since the age of 12 and the uncomfortable environment of living in a closed-minded community in Northeast Maine. He briefly attended college in Tampa, Florida then Ricker College in Houlton. While living in Connecticut, he began hitchhiking to New York City on a regular basis to enjoy the city’s theater scene and night life. He moved to New York where his ...

All Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Viewing gender as a performance reveals how gender identity is shaped and formed. There is currently tensions associated with drag queen performance as an act of subversion and transgression from the heteronormative definition of gender and drag as a perpetuation of heteronormative definitions of gender. There is also a tension between the affirmation of femininity and transgression from gender binaries of womanhood. In order to address these tensions, this thesis project examined the reasoning behind how transgender women and gay men drag queen performers navigate the world of femininity. Specifically, this study explored the varied reasons behind performing femininity through ...

Barteaux, Kennedy, Kayla Woodward, Nathanial Koch

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Kennedy Barteaux is a 38 year old trans man who grew up in Norridgewock, Maine who knew from a young age that he was queer. He was outed to his parents as a lesbian at age 14 and was kicked out of the house and moved in with a supportive friend’s family in Skowhegan. He moved to Portland at age 18 and got involved with the Dyke March. Barteaux discusses his discomfort with existing gender expectations and stereotypes in both the gay and trans communities. He talks about community organizing and public speaking with and for the trans community ...

Solomon, Howard, Richard Morin, Michelle Johnston

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Howard Solomon is a 76 year-old man who grew up in New Castle, Pennsylvania. During his early years, and still today, Judaism played a significant role in his life. His dad was a Kosher butcher, and Solomon attended a Hebrew school while growing up. Solomon’s profession was teaching history as a college professor at New York University, Tufts University, and the University of Southern Maine. Towards the end of his full-time teaching career, he taught a class about Lesbian and Gay History. During the same period, he openly discussed his homosexuality in the university context. He witnessed the AIDS ...

Vaughan, Cait, Kyle F. Cumiskey, Diane Martin

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Cait Vaughan was born in San Diego on a military base and grew up in Nashua, New Hampshire. Vaughan lived with her father, step-mom, and four younger siblings. Vaughan grew up in a religious household with a father with homophobic views. She was outed as queer by her sister at age 16. In 2004, she graduated from Nashua High School where she experienced severe harassment for her sexuality. She went on to college at UNH and founded the “Women’s Union.” Vaughan became involved in African-American Studies, diversity work, and the Harriet Wilson Project. She is currently volunteering for the ...

Vermette, Jean, Annie Holland, Olivia Tryon-Nadeau

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Jean Vermette, born in 1954, is a transgender woman from Skowhegan, Maine. At the age of three, Jean knew that her biological sex did not match her gender identity. When Jean came out as transgender to her wife in the 1980s, her marriage soon dissolved. After Jean filed for divorce, she spent five years transitioning. In addition to working as a self-employed electrician, Jean has dedicated her adult life to advocating for Maine’s transgender community. She created the Maine Gender Resource and Support Service and spent over fifteen years speaking publicly to Maine college students and medical professionals about ...

Parsons, Betsy, Shanisa Rodriguez, Madison Leblanc

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Betsy Parsons grew up in a Midwestern town in the 1960s and 1970’s in a middle class educated family active in the local community. Her father and mother were both teachers. Her mother and father met in Orono, Maine in English class before migrating to the Midwest. Parsons describes developing a love a teaching from her parents; she knew from a young age that she wanted to become a teacher herself and began teaching at Portland High School in 1977. She describes herself as a ‘late bloomer’ in terms of her sexuality; she didn’t come out to herself ...

Bull, Steven, Alanna Larrivee, Tracy Payne

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

The Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine’s LGBTQ+ Collection includes important papers, photographs, and other artifacts representing four decades of LGBTQ activism, culture, and commerce in the Southern Maine region. The Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project is intended to add an additional dimension to the Collection by collecting and preserving the voices and stories of members of the Southern Maine LGBTQ community. The oral histories are available to the public in an effort to enrich understanding of our community and will serve as an important resource for scholars working on LGBTQ history.

Verzosa, Andres, Brendan Butler, Alexander Blake

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

In this interview, Andres “Andy” Verzosa discusses being a gay man in Portland, Maine, where he was born. Andres Verzosa is Mainer of Filipino and Irish roots. He grew up in Portland, Maine in a working-class household. He talks about his father, who was in the Coast Guard, and the sudden death of his brother when he was young. He attended the Portland School of Art – now known as the Maine College of Art (MECA) – and helped create the First Friday Art Walk in Portland, Maine, as well as owning various art galleries including Aucocisco in Portland, Maine. Verzosa also ...

Arbor, Kelly, Alanna Larrivee, Emma Wynn Hill

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

The Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine’s LGBTQ+ Collection includes important papers, photographs, and other artifacts representing four decades of LGBTQ activism, culture, and commerce in the Southern Maine region. The Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project is intended to add an additional dimension to the Collection by collecting and preserving the voices and stories of members of the Southern Maine LGBTQ community. The oral histories are available to the public in an effort to enrich understanding of our community and will serve as an important resource for scholars working on LGBTQ history.

Moser, W. Jo, Wendy Chapkis

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

W. Jo Moser is a mother, photographer, political activist, and lesbian. She has experience working in childcare and is passionate about child welfare. Moser has a unique perspective as a lesbian parent being in a romantic long-term relationship with her partner of several decades. She sheds light on what living in San Francisco was like as a queer-identifying person in the 60s, 70s, and early-80s. There were experiences of social isolation she shared. This isolation was due to the fact that she did not always feel accepted in lesbian communities, but also felt that she had to prove herself to ...

SURGE

I know you’ve all been seeing this image all of your Facebook news feeds. All of the sudden a few weeks ago it became everyone’s profile picture. People were sharing it, along with other images, explaining why Prop. 8 and the Defense Of Marriage Act should be repealed, and were generally expressing their support of marriage equality. [excerpt]